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Mr. Dalyell: I did object to them.
Mr. McAllion: For once, my hon. Friend has got me. However, I was surprised that he quoted Edward Carson as an example of what the United Kingdom stands for. If I remember rightly, Carson was the man who said, "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right," in defiance of the democratically expressed wishes of the United Kingdom Parliament. That is not the kind of example to which someone who believes in the United Kingdom Parliament should refer. I was surprised at my hon. Friend for making that observation.
I am pleased that 11 September is the date for the Scottish referendum. In future, that day will be remembered not just for the battle of Stirling bridge, but as the date on which the Scottish people had the courage and determination to vote to bring back to their own country Scottish democracy and a Scottish Parliament. It will be remembered for ever more for that reason.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that it is important to remember the reception that the White Paper has had in Scotland. It has had a hostile reception here tonight, but it has had a marvellous reception in Scotland. Everywhere, politicians, political activists, the press, other media, and even the public have been delighted with the proposals. It is not often that the public are delighted by the same things as politicians, so it is nice when it happens. It has created the incredible circumstances in Scotland in which the Scottish Labour party and the Scottish National party, which have been at each other's throats for the past generation, have come together to fight for the same proposals. That is one of the most exciting things to happen in my country for a long time.
Mr. Dalyell:
Will my hon. Friend solve a mystery for me? We were told on Thursday night last week that the public were delighted. On Thursday night, most of them could not have obtained copies of the White Paper, let alone read it.
Mr. McAllion:
My hon. Friend often exaggerates his case, and I should be free to exaggerate mine as well.
The only really sour notes that have been struck today, apart from those by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and the Tory Opposition, have been by some elements of big business. The Scotsman this morning reported that Sir Alistair Grant--it is funny how these
big business people always have names like Alistair--chairman of Scottish Newcastle, has warned against a Scottish Parliament because it will threaten investment into Scotland, make Scottish exports uncompetitive and generally be bad for the Scottish economy.
Sir Alistair, and big business in general, are entitled to their point of view, but hon. Members should be conscious of the track record of big business on political matters over a long period. For example, big business thought that the universal franchise, giving the vote to the workers, was a bad thing. It thought that it was a bad thing that trade unions should be given legal protection. It still does. It thought that it was a bad thing that taxes should be raised to pay for the NHS and the welfare state. It still thinks that it is a bad thing to have a national minimum wage to take people out of poverty wages. It thinks that it is a really bad thing for anyone to suggest that there should be democracy in the workplace and that workers should have a say in what happens in their companies.
The political judgment of big business is usually self-serving, almost always reactionary and deeply anti-democratic. If Keir Hardie had listened to the views of big business in his day, he would never have set up the Labour party. I am glad that he did not listen to its views. My advice to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench is to follow in the footsteps of Keir Hardie and not listen to the views of Sir Alistair Grant or anyone else in big business, whether or not they are on the cocktail circuit.
I want to focus on two of the main arguments against a Scottish Parliament. The first is the alleged damage that opponents say will arise because of the tax-varying powers that will be given to that Parliament. We have already heard many of the scare stories associated with that--the extra tax burden on individuals who live and work in Scotland; the possible widening of the tax base by a Scottish Parliament which is beyond the control of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this House--that really worries many hon. Members here--and the impact of those extra taxes on the competitiveness of the Scottish economy.
Those arguments chime with the prevailing orthodoxy in the House, perhaps on both sides, that low taxes and low levels of public spending are the only keys to economic success in the modern world. There is nothing new or modern about that orthodoxy. It has been the prevailing orthodoxy of most Tory Governments during the past century. I do not agree with it. I reject the notion that raising taxes and increasing public spending must, by definition, disadvantage the Scottish economy or any other economy.
Scottish business can be equally damaged by a failure to raise public revenue for investment in the social and economic infrastructure. For example, does any hon. Member believe that it would not be in the interests of Scottish business for Scotland to have a fully integrated public transport system? Of course that would be to the advantage of Scottish business. But that cannot happen unless we raise taxes and the level of public spending. That is a lesson that must be learned by the House at some point.
Mr. Swinney:
I am grateful to my neighbour from Dundee, East for giving way. Is he satisfied that the
Mr. McAllion:
I am never satisfied with anything--that is part of my nature. I am always looking for a little bit extra in any situation. But that is a serious point. We should not allow to go unchallenged the orthodoxy that says that public spending is a bad thing and is bad for business. Public spending is a good thing and can be good for business.
My wife went to Holland for a medical conference and she could not believe the integrated transport structure there. Trains go straight into the airport. One leaves a beautiful train and climbs aboard a plane to fly off. Try getting out of this place--getting from here to Heathrow is a nightmare. The underground system of this great capital city is screaming out for public investment. The public want taxes to be raised to pay for the transport infrastructure to make this country more economic.
Is anyone arguing that modern and well-equipped schools providing first-class education for all would not give us a competitive advantage over other countries? Of course they would. Is anybody arguing that the costsof crime are not crippling business? What causes those costs? Unemployment, poverty, deprivation and homelessness cause them. Those require public spending, and I have no problems with a Scottish Parliament having tax-raising powers. I shall be arguing in the referendum campaign that those powers should not only be given, but be used. Properly applied, the higher public spending which those tax-varying powers will unlock will be a significant advantage to the Scottish people, business and the economy.
The final point that I should like to make--unless my hon. Friends want me to continue to prevent Tory Members from getting in--concerns the argument that the White Paper proposals constitute a slippery slope to independence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow has put it, this is a one-way motorway with no exits, whose destination is the break-up of the UK. We have heard a lot about that tonight.
My first reaction is to echo the Scottish writer Willie McIllvaney, who wrote:
I suspect that those who go on about slippery slopes and one-way motorways are uncertain about their own arguments for maintaining the status quo. They hide behind Jeremiah warnings, accusing the Parliament proposed in the White Paper of being something that it palpably is not. If they were honest with themselves, they would argue coherently and consistently why it is in the interests of the Scottish people to continue to be governed directly from this Parliament 400 miles away. That should be the basis of their case--not nonsense threats or warnings about where a Scottish Parliament set up in Edinburgh might or might not lead.
That argument takes us on to the dangerous ground of sovereignty, which has been touched on by some hon. Members. I make no apology--I signed the Claim of Right for Scotland because I believed in it. I fully accept that the people of Scotland have the sovereign right to decide for themselves how and by whom they are governed. The English people and all other British people also have that sovereign right.
I find it inexplicable that any democrat or socialist could believe for a moment that sovereignty should be vested in the Westminster Parliament rather than in the people who elect the Westminster Parliament. This Parliament--or, to give it its full sovereign title, the Queen in Parliament--is only partly elected. This is the only elected part of the Westminster Parliament, which is only partly modern. It is still partly mediaeval, as would become obvious to anyone witnessing the state opening of Parliament by the Queen in her regalia and finery from the middle ages. If we want to modernise our political institutions, we have to begin by accepting the basis of every modern democracy in the developed world--that sovereignty rests with the people and with no one else.
The theory of the supreme sovereignty of Parliament has been breached by the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union. European laws have primacy over the laws passed by this Westminster Parliament. To paraphrase an old song by the Proclaimers, it was "sovereignty no more" for this Parliament when we became members of the EU. The Scottish Constitutional Convention, in its final report "Scotland's Parliament, Scotland's Right", noted that while, in theory, under the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom, any Scotland Act could be repealed or amended without restriction by any subsequent Westminster Parliament, in practice such an action would be politically impossible.
Using as an example the entrenched rights of the Church of Scotland under the unwritten constitution of the UK, the report recommended that similar entrenchment should be made available for the Scottish Parliament to make it impossible to repeal or to amend a Scotland Act without the prior approval of the Scottish Parliament or the Scottish people in a further referendum. I note that that recommendation has not been acted on--quite the reverse. The White Paper makes it clear that the UK Parliament will remain sovereign. I know that that is a necessary compromise to get anything through a UK Cabinet and Parliament. We all know the reality--it does not make much difference.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made clear--and, indeed, as the Leader of the Opposition has made clear--no United Kingdom Government would or could ever deny the Scottish people the right to decide for themselves how they are to be governed. Lady Thatcher accepted that as a reality, although she had no time for the Scots during her long period in office. The right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), who fought the last general election on the basis that he would retain the United Kingdom's integrity, accepted it as a reality.
If, having been convinced by the arguments for it, the Scottish people voted for independence, any Government who described themselves as democratic in any meaningful sense would have to accept that decision. Every hon. Member knows that that is the truth; there is no point in pretending that it is not. The people will decide, not politicians in this place or anywhere else. As far as I can see, however, all the evidence suggests
that the Scottish people are not yet convinced by the arguments for independence--although I suspect that they would become so if the Government failed to implement the proposals in the White Paper, for whatever reason.
One thing is certain. Opposition Members who do not live in Scotland--who go there occasionally to fish, hunt or whatever--should accept that there is no future for the constitutional status quo in Scotland, which was decisively rejected by the Scottish people when they announced the change in the mandate. The question, of course, is the degree of the change that they demanded.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow said that it was not possible to ride two horses at the same time--that we must be either in or outside the United Kingdom--but I do not accept that. No one uses the same argument in relation to the European Union. It is quite the reverse: the United Kingdom is in and out of Europe at the same time. Despite the boasts about the opt-outs that Britain has, we are partly in and partly out. If the single currency goes ahead, Britain may be in and it may be out.
The position is exactly the same in this context. Sovereignty can be shared by the same people across different Parliaments. The Scottish people can decide to be in the European Union, and to concede some of their sovereignty to that institution. They can decide to be in this Parliament and concede some of their sovereignty to it, and they can decide to have their own Parliament and to concede the rest of that sovereignty. It is not impossible to achieve that; it is very easy. It has been achieved in other democratic modern constitutions.
I see many arguments for retaining the United Kingdom. I see no sense in arguing for the break-up of the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force or the Army, or for different social security systems in the north and the south of this island. There should be a single integrated social security system--although it should be much better than the pathetic system that we have now, which victimises the poor in a very obvious way. Nor am I convinced by the arguments for a separate Scottish currency. I do not think that that would be in the interests of the Scottish people.
I am delighted, and convinced, by the proposals in the White Paper. As someone who has been committed to home rule for Scotland throughout my political life, seeing it as a priority, I am enthusiastic about the Scottish Parliament that is envisaged in the White Paper: I feel that I can fight for it. It is a Parliament which will be widely welcomed across Scotland. I do not think that the Scottish people are ready for separation, and I think that every election, every opinion poll and every referendum in Scotland has shown that to be the case.
The new Parliament will excite the people of Scotland. I do not fear proportional representation. I recognise that electoral systems are not run for the benefit of political parties; they are run for the benefit of those who elect political parties in to office. The first-past-the-post system disfranchises far too many people. The Scottish Parliament will not be dominated by any party or any area; it will be a genuine people's Parliament, about which all Scotland can be enthusiastic.
"To reject devolution because it might lead further is equivalent to a refusal to engage in argument because you might have to change your mind."
Willie, as always, was absolutely right. Scotland will go down the road to independence only when the people who live in Scotland are convinced by the argument. That is the basic reality. It will not be because of a Parliament here or an Assembly there, but because they believe that it is in their interests to have independence. There is no other way in which independence will come to Scotland.
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